It’s been almost a year since The Super Mario Bros. Movie first Goomba-stomped its way into theaters, meaning it’s been almost a year since we learned that Illumination didn’t quite solve the video game movie curse with this one.
While it wasn’t without its merits (namely the animation and the voice performances from Jack Black and Anya Taylor-Joy as Bowser and Princess Peach, respectively), the film largely fell flat on its face from a critical perspective thanks to its plot being nothing more than some thinly-connected set pieces, each one more saturated with fan service than the last.
This apparently came as a surprise for Black, who recently revealed in an interview with Total Film that he was dumbfounded at the underwhelming critical reception for The Super Mario Bros. Movie (it’s been hovering around its current 59 percent approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes ever since the embargo lifted), and also thankful that it didn’t seem to impede its billion-dollar box office performance.
“They screened it for me a month before it hit theaters. I was like, ‘We’ve got a hit on our hands.’ I’m laughing and smiling the whole way through this movie. And then it came out and it got horrible reviews. I was like, ‘What movie did they see?’ Luckily, the world didn’t listen to Rotten Tomatoes, and it was one of the biggest hits of all time.”
I’m glad Black had a blast with it, but The Super Mario Bros. Movie absolutely deserved the critical response that it received. It may be a completely harmless, sugar-coated children’s film, but in no way does that mean it’s beyond critique; in fact, to suggest otherwise would be an insult to children’s media as a whole.
Did Mario have to be a good movie? No, it didn’t; young kids would have lapped up the bright colors and cutesy enemies regardless of the film’s execution of storytelling fundamentals. But, Toy Story didn’t need to be a good movie either; neither did How to Train Your Dragon, The Lego Movie, or The Mitchells vs. the Machines, but all of those family-centric films were good anyway, and—at the risk of sounding reductive—were far better for it. Furthermore, given that an IP like Mario effortlessly resonates through countless generations, what’s the logic behind limiting yourself to young children as your target audience?
So no, Mario didn’t need to be good. But there’s no rule that says any movie has to be good; movies should want to be good, and sadly, The Super Mario Bros. Movie‘s self-interest began and ended with its potential for empty-calorie fan service.
(via Total Film, featured image: Illumination)
